Page 69 of Tormented Hearts

She nodded hard but still clung to him, fingers fisted in his shirt. Her breath came in ragged, uneven pulls, and he held her through it and let her fall apart because she’d earned the right to.

He reached for his phone with his free hand, keeping his voice level even as blood pulsed through his fingers with each throb of his heart. He managed to connect to a satellite link and put the phone on speaker.

“Black Heart, this is Hawk. We’ve got two hostiles down. One friendly injured—through-and-through. I’m stable but need extraction. Sending the coordinates now.”

Gray’s voice crackled back. “Jesus Christ. Copy that, Hawk. Chopper is fueled. Crew is on standby. We’re coming to get you both. Hang tight.”

“Copy.” He ended the call and pressed his lips to the top of Sinead’s head, unsure who was holding up who at this point.

“They’re coming,” he murmured against her soft hair. “Hang on, darlin’. We just need to hang on a little longer.”

She nodded against his chest, still shaking and still gripping his shirt like she couldn’t survive letting go.

He held her tighter, aware that his fingers and toes were already growing cold from blood loss.

Whatever this was between them, it was fucking real.

The words she’d said back in that mine, he hadn’t found a way to answer yet.

But he knew one thing with absolute certainty.

He intended to live long enough to say it back.

* * * * *

Sinead watched the men load Hawk into the helicopter, quietly losing it.

Actually losing it.

Part of her brain was screaming this was happening too fast and not fast enough all at once.

Hawk was so pale. Paper-white, lips nearly bloodless, nothing like the sun-warmed man who’d trekked the mountain and discovered gold with her an hour ago.

Two men—Gray Malone and a pilot named Crew—got him on a stretcher between them and moved quickly to the waiting helicopter.

“Wait.” Hawk’s voice came out as a rough rasp. “Sinead…”

“I’m here!” She rushed up to him and grabbed his hand before they could load him inside. Her heart sank to her boots at the icy feel of his fingers in hers. Cold in a way that made her stomach bottom out too.

Gray closed his hand around her arm, his touch steady and his gray eyes solemn. “Come on. You sit beside him.”

She bobbed her head in a nod and let him guide her up into the chopper, barely registering the noise or the wind whipping her hair across her face. Because all she could focus on was getting her hand back around Hawk’s.

In moments, they were lifting off. The motion jostled him, and his brows pinched in a deeper frown at the pain that must be rocketing through him. His eyes were closed, and she saw the tendons in his jaw bulging with the effort to keep from making a sound.

Sinead touched his hand, his forearm, his sleeve, as a primal part of her brain insisted that as long as she stayed connected to him, he couldn’t slip away.

Please don’t let him slip away. I just found him.

Gray sat opposite her, his expression calm even as he spoke into his headset in clipped tones, rattling off instructions to whoever was on the other end.

“Prep the clinic. Pull Hawk’s blood type from his file. Get Hitchcock on standby.” Gray’s stare landed on Sinead. “Bella too. Tell Denver to clear the drive.”

“This is going to be all hands on deck,” she heard herself say, though she wasn’t sure who she was saying it to.

The flight blurred past in fragments—Hawk’s hand in hers, his eyes fluttering. Gray’s voice steady in the background. And then they were landing, and the world exploded into motion.

The guys swarmed around them the second the skids touched down. A wall of competent men were there to lift Hawk with practiced care, as if they did this for their brothers on the Black Heart Security team all the time.